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This article responds to increasing discourses on digital social innovation (DSI) from the perspectives of women entrepreneurs. Using the individual differences theory of gender and information technology (IDTGIT), this research explores how digital technology is used by women entrepreneurs to create opportunities in response to the challenges associated with individual identity, individual influences, social influences and structural influences. We also extend the IDTGIT by exploring how technology is used by women entrepreneurs in their DSI ventures and how technology facilitates the social impact of such ventures. This paper draws on a qualitative study using interviews with 17 women entrepreneurs in Australia, and our findings indicate that individual identity, individual influences and social and structural influences play a significant role in inhibiting women entrepreneurs' business ventures but technology helps to create opportunities for women entrepreneurs to address these factors. We also found that technology plays a role in helping women entrepreneurs to pursue social innovation in two different ways: through social innovation that is embodied by technology and social innovation that is enabled by technology. Our findings further indicate the social impact of DSI in the areas of education, employment, environment and climate, community development and progress and healthcare. The theoretical and practical implications of DSI for women entrepreneurs are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of female entrepreneurship is a dynamic field, with more women than men engaging in self-employment in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. Prior research in this field has identified a series of factors which characterize entrepreneurs. This paper examines the extent to which the experiences of Australian women entrepreneurs are reflected in the prior research. In particular, emphasis is placed on whether the personal characteristics, educational levels, motivations for starting business and resource acquisition behaviour of contemporary Australian women entrepreneurs are reflected in the prior research. While many of the key findings of prior research were found to describe accurately the experience of Australian women entrepreneurs, three new factors have been identified. First, Australian women entrepreneurs have increasingly come from business education backgrounds compared to the predominantly liberal arts backgrounds reported elsewhere. Second, the reasons for establishing small business differ insofar as they represent a greater proportion of general business needs as well as personal internal needs. Third, Australian women entrepreneurs are moving away from traditional 'female industries' into sectors identified as 'male industries' such as manufacturing. Overall, Australian women entrepreneurs demonstrate similarities in their identifying characteristics; however, significant shifts are occurring in their behaviours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agriculture has traditionally been framed as men's work, while women's contributions to the sector have largely been rendered invisible. This article examines the emerging agricultural professional services sector, asking how a changing environment for agriculture may be disrupting traditional gender norms framing agricultural employment. Drawing together the literature in gender and agriculture, professional services and entrepreneurship and interviews with 22 women who have built businesses in agricultural professional services in Australia, our analysis identifies that a confluence of macro and micro activities are shaping new opportunities for women in agricultural employment. Through leveraging a changing industry environment, exercising agency, (valuing) local matters and communion, participants are disturbing traditional gendered patterns of agricultural employment. Our analysis highlights how, as participants build their businesses and demonstrate agency in a dynamic environment, they value the integrating, reconciling, and synthesizing they experience from supporting the flow of activities in their communities. In claiming their space in the changing landscape of agricultural professional services, they exemplify communion enriched by agency, and we see a tempered disruption of the gendered norms in agricultural employment. The article contributes to scholarship on agricultural professional work and identifies how historical patterns of employment and masculine privilege are being disrupted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Occupational stress was measured in 163 Australian managerial and professional women through the use of the self-report measure the Occupational Stress Indicator. Normative data were obtained reporting scale reliabilities, and differences between women according to marital and parental status and most stressful roles. The wife role had the highest mean score for the ‘most stressful role’. Women with three or more children reported poorer physical health, and having parental status was associated with headaches, exhaustion, overeating, smoking and drinking. Nonetheless, this group also had significantly high scores for job satisfaction. Having children under I g years of age was associated with the experience of a decrease in sexual interest, as was having full-time work status. Single women suffered poorer reported mental health than married women and scored highest for Type A behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]